Dan, still in his familiar spot in left field, looked over and gave his former teammate a thumbs-up gesture before settling in to watch the lead-off batter take his place in the box.
The action kicked off with a bang. The visiting team jumped out to a quick three-run lead and scurried to their defensive positions while chattering confidently to each other.
The Panthers definitely were missing on one cylinder, Bucky noted as the innings unfolded. Dan managed singles on his first two at-bats, but both times the bases were empty. During the sixth inning the Panthers managed to load the bags with two out, but Dan, eager to make up the four-run deficit all by himself, swung too hard and sent a towering fly directly into the left fielder’s glove to end the inning. In his frustration Bucky kicked at the metal framework in from of him. On the one hand, it was strangely comforting to see how the team missed his contributions. But for Dan’s and Coach Brayshaw’s sake, he wanted the team to somehow put together a winning combination. The conflicting emotions nibbled at the back of his mind.
“There you are!”
The Voice. A grin crossed Bucky’s face despite the Panthers’ unsuccessful efforts. “Hey!” He scooted over as Deirdre climbed up and sat next to him in the grandstands. “I didn’t see you sneak up on me.”
“Well, I tiptoed over just to surprise you.” A mock pout crossed her face as she looked at his cast. “So that awful Hilliard really did get you, huh?”
“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Thunked me pretty good.”
She reached across him to trace a finger over his cast. Her hand slid down until it just touched his. “Tsk tsk,” she murmured, her voice husky. “Mr. Stone, in the words of our former president, ‘Honey, you forgot to duck.’”
Pleasantly confused, he shook his head. “I don’t get that one,” he confessed, “but, boy, you’re right.” He shaded his eyes as Dan gathered in a deep fly ball on the warning track. “Didn’t have much chance to duck or jump or nothin’.”
“That’s what old Ronald Reagan said to his wife when he got shot. Back in the eighties,” she explained. ‘“Honey, I forgot to duck.’ Didn’t you take history last year?”
“I’ll take your word for it.” They watched the last of the seventh inning tick off. Final score: Kennedy 5, Hampton Beach 1. Deirdre sighed melodramatically. “Without my main man in there, Panthers are just nothing.”
“Yeah, it’s all my fault.” As they ambled toward the parking lot, he described the job opportunity at the bank.
“Sounds pretty good,” she murmured. “Anytime I run low on dough, I can just stop by with a suitcase and say, ‘Fill it up, Mr. Stone.’”
Chapter Four: Rookie at the Bank
Traffic was already thick as Bucky and Sandy motored up Interstate 80 toward Sacramento early Monday morning. Sandy was a short college-age girl with medium-dark skin and the longest dangling earrings he had ever seen.
“Everybody’s doin’ seventy,” she chortled, sliding her big Oldsmobile into the fast lane. Her laugh was a little machine-gun burst that she emitted every minute or so as she bantered with him.
“So you’re a baseball star, huh?” she teased, shrugged.
“Naaah, just fair.”
“Too bad about your arm.”
He shifted in the leather seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. “How about you? Are you . . . in college or something?”
“No. Well, I went to community college for a year. At Solano. Nursing, you know? But I wasn’t doing too good, and then I got pregnant and quit.”
“That’s too bad.”
She peered in the rearview mirror before changing lanes again. “Yeah. It was rough all right. My boyfriend wanted us to get married, but I told him, ‘No way.’” For the first time a troubled look crossed her face.
“So what happened?”
Sandy shrugged. “We finally split up. I went ahead and had the baby and gave it up for adoption. Some of my friends tried to take me to get an abortion but I just. . . couldn’t. You know?”
Bucky nodded.
With two minutes to spare they wheeled into the corporate offices where First California Bank’s statewide training program was held. “Just in time!” With remarkable agility Bucky hopped out of the car and locked it tight behind him.
“Coffee! That’s what I need!” Sandy exclaimed as they entered the foyer. She poured herself a cup of the steaming liquid. “You want some?”
“No thanks.” He looked around for directions. “Guess we’re down here.”
The day was a whirlwind of study, Powerpoint presentations, and fascinating details about bank security and robbery prevention. “Man, I had no idea banks had so many ways to keep from getting held up!” he marveled to Sandy as they enjoyed lunch in the building’s lavish dining room.
“Yeah, lotta tricks,” she nodded, chewing noisily on a ham sandwich.
“Now every branch office has its own procedures for coping with incidents like these,” the instructor explained during the afternoon session. “When you train with them, you’ll be briefed on exactly how you handle emergencies. Especially if you’re in a position where you can’t activate an alarm yourself, there are ways to let a fellow worker know you’re in trouble.”
Bucky raised his hand. “Seems like I heard once that banks change their – you know – signals and stuff so often.”
“Oh, sure. At least once a month you have a meeting where you’ll learn the latest system.” The woman paused. “That’s also to help prevent what we unfortunately have a lot of – attempted holdups by former employees who think they know all the inside dope.” A buzz of interest filled the meeting room.
Drills involving the most common banking procedures filled the rest of the day. “Good thing we got these manuals to study,” Bucky groaned as he and Sandy rode home. “Deposits, transfers to other accounts, CDs, money orders, ATM cards. Man, I’ll never learn all this stuff!”
“Sure you will. First couple of weeks they got someone looking over your shoulder all the time anyway. So whenever you get stuck, you just ask.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He gazed out the window at the setting sun. “Those terminals are something, aren’t they?”
The rest of the week was equally intriguing. Bucky proved to be a quick student. Several times he found himself actually showing other trainees how to complete an intricate banking procedure involving several accounts.
“Not bad, Stone,” complimented the supervisor watching him finish a transaction. “You sure you aren’t a spy for headquarters?”
Friday afternoon the seventy-five trainees went through a grueling three-hour test, part of it written and the rest in simulated banking procedures. Only once did Bucky find himself stumped – when a “customer” tried to transfer some funds out of a business account before the necessary deposits had cleared. The rest of the examination went smoothly. His natural interest in banking had made it easy to remember the various operations he would soon be using.
“Pretty good work,” the assistant trainer nodded, handing him the computerized grade sheet. “Hampton Beach’ll be lucky to have you.”
Carefully Bucky folded the test and tucked it into his blue F.C.B. folder before going out to the parking lot to look for Sandy.
• • • • •
That evening he curled up on the living room couch and dialed a familiar number in Washington. A voice answered on the first ring. “Hello.”
“How’s it going?”
“Bucky!” Lisa’s bubbly voice filled the receiver! “Been a while since I’ve heard from you, boyfriend,” she scolded.
“Yeah.” He propped his legs up on the edge of the couch. “Sorry.”
“How’re you doing down there?”
“Pretty good.” Not hiding his excitement, he told her about the bank seminar and his new job.
“That’s so cool!” Her enthusiasm brought back memories from the previous school year. “That’s awful about your arm though.”
The couple chatted fo
r fifteen minutes. Bucky told Lisa all the latest school gossip, carefully omitting any mention of Deirdre. No reason to tell her that stuff, he warned his guilty conscience.
“How’s church up there?” he asked at last, remembering that it was the weekend.
Lisa gave her characteristic little sigh. “Oh, not so good.”
“How come?”
“Well, I went to that one you told me about for a while. When I could get rides, anyway.”
“Yeah.”
A short pause. “Oh, it’s hard to explain. I just didn’t make any friends there . . . and I always had to go by myself. So I finally just quit. A little bit after Christmas.”
Bucky winced. Why hadn’t he called more? “Oh, man,” he managed. “That’s too bad. I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah. I really kinda miss it.” Lisa sounded a little forlorn. “But my folks didn’t like it, and not having friends and all . . .”
A few minutes later, after hanging up the phone, Bucky remained on the couch, his mind in a knot. Even with Deirdre’s looks and mysterious personality, the memory of Lisa next to him at church caused a fresh jab of pain, “Something about her . . .” he muttered himself as he slid off the loveseat. Just then the cell phone rang. Lurching forward to pick it up again, he clumsily knocked his left arm against the hard edge of the bookcase. “Ouch!” He sucked in his breath in irritation. “Hello?”
“Oh, Mr. Stone, it’s you.”
Bucky found himself blushing at the irony of having conversations with Lisa and Deirdre just seconds apart from each other. Neither one knows about the other, he reminded himself.
“Yes, it is.” He paused. “To whom might I be speaking?”
The blonde gave her low chuckle. “Who else could it be but your favorite fan?” She cleared her throat, then added, “I tried to call a couple times before, but your line was always busy. Other female admirers, perhaps?”
Quickly he tried to think of a safe way of evading the question. “Yeah, sure. The president of the fan club. How’s it goin’?” Just then his mother, an expression of curiosity on her face, entered the living room. He gave her a helpless shrug.
“Oh, fine. I just called to hear how you’re enjoying the world of high finance.”
“It’s great!” For the second time he described the Sacramento training seminar.
“You start Monday then?”
They visited for several minutes. Sometimes Deirdre would chatter away like any other high schooler, then she would abruptly slip into her mysterious mode. Baffled, yet still pleased, Bucky grinned to himself.
“What’d you do all week?”
“Oh, just hung around the house mostly. Went shopping yesterday, spent part of today working with that school committee.”
“Huh?”
She groaned delicately. “Oh, they put me on that group helping plan the spring prom. And they had a meeting today. Can you imagine that? During vacation?”
He shook his head. “Yuck. How’d it go?”
“Oh, actually not that bad. It’s going to be a terrific program. Committee got approval to bring in an L.A. band I’ve always liked.”
“When is the prom anyway?”
“Three weeks from tonight.”
Knowing it was probably a mistake, he sucked in an extra load of oxygen. “Can I get my bid in right now? I’d love to take you.”
“Why, Mr. Stone,” she said sweetly. “I’d be delighted.”
“Awesome.” A stray memory came bouncing back . . . to when he had dragged Lisa off the dance floor because of the suggestive moves kids were strutting. I’ll deal with that when it comes up.
They chatted a few more minutes and he decided to take another plunge. “What do you think about . . . church this weekend?” His mind lurched back to similar conversations with Lisa. Somehow it had been so much easier with her.
“Huh? Church?”
“Sure. At Christ Our Redeemer. It’s terrific there.”
She paused. “Oh, yeah. I remember now. You and Sam go pretty steadily.”
“Yeah. Well?”
She made a little sniffing noise. “Aaah, I don’t think so. Church and me, Mr. Stone – we just don’t get along.”
“That’s too bad.” He tried to keep his response light.
“Yeah, well, you go and then tell me later what the padre said.” She laughed. “You can be the middleman.”
He hung up with a sigh.
• • • • •
Monday afternoon after class he headed for the Hampton Beach branch of First California Bank. The medium-size office was a convenient four-block hike from the high school.
“Hello, Bucky!” Mr. Willis came out of his office to greet him. “Welcome aboard!”
Bucky looked around the comfortable branch with its row of teller windows and desks for loan officers. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”
“Great!” The manager shook Bucky’s free hand enthusiastically, then steered him over to a young woman working in the teller area. “Let me introduce you to our assistant manager, Veronica Steele. She’ll help you get started here.”
In her mid-thirties, Veronica was friendly in a detached way. With a minimum of fuss she showed him around the office, explaining where everything was located.
“Now you’re working, what, three afternoons a week? And then full time this summer?”
“I hope so,” he replied with a grin.
She scooped up some teller slips and went over with him to an empty window. “Well, may as well get started,” she observed. “We got another student coming in Thursday, and we’ll go over some security stuff then, so try not to get held up this afternoon.
“You know most of those procedures anyway. But we have some of our own policies here, and you need to get up to speed on them right away.”
With a line already formed, he knew it was time for business. “May I help you?” he called out to the next person waiting for an available teller.
The two hours slipped by without incident. Just once he had to motion for Veronica’s assistance. “This account doesn’t register on the screen,” he explained, pointing toward the screen on the computer terminal at his station.
“Punch it in again,” she directed.
As he did so, she spotted his error. “You put in the branch code before hitting ‘Enter,’” she reminded.
“Oops. My bad.” This time the transaction went through without a hitch.
Right at quitting time, Mr. Willis showed up again. “How’d you make out?”
“Fine.” Bucky couldn’t hide his enthusiasm. “This is really great!”
“Well, let me say it again: we’re glad to have you with us.” The bank officer smiled broadly. “What are you going to do with the big money we’re paying you?”
“Oh, save for a car, I guess.”
The older man raised an eyebrow. “If you’re serious, we have an excellent employee savings program here. Part of your paycheck can go straight into an account that earns top interest plus a half-point employee bonus. It’s a pretty good deal – and if you decide to get a car loan, we have a below-market program for that, too. Just for employees. So don’t be afraid to ask.”
“Wow. Thanks; I will.” He spied Mom’s car pulling up outside. “I guess my ride is here.”
“OK. Good night, then.”
Chapter Five: Right Song, Wrong Place
Tuesday at lunch Bucky munched leisurely on the sandwiches his mother had packed for him. Even though it was only late March, the student body was restless for summer. Everybody seemed to have the just - back - from - spring - break blues.
“So you guys won yesterday, huh?” he said to Dan.
“Yeah.” The other boy grunted as he snapped a cookie in two. “Lucky.”
“Better take wins any way you can get ‘em.”
“Boy, you’re not kidding. Five hits – that’s all we got. Plus six walks.”
“That’s what did it,” Bucky laughed.
Dan chuck
led. “We had about two fans in the stands, and they started singin’ that oldie song from the seventies at their pitcher when he walked in a run. You know? ‘Wild thing! You make my heart sing!’ It was funny.”
Just then Sam walked up with a tray in his hand. “Hey, guys.” He sat down next to them.
Dan nodded to the senior as he shaded his eyes in the noon glare. “You ask that Deirdre to the prom yet?”
Bucky nodded. “Yeah. I hadn’t even heard about it, but she’s on the committee and all.”
Sam grinned. “So we just hope things stay kosher. I mean, with the dancing and all.”
Leaning back against the metal backrest, Dan propped his feet up on the table. “What are you guys talking about, Stone? Dancing’s dancing.” He shrugged. “Not that I’m any good at it.”
Bucky took another bite of his sandwich. “It’s just that . . . bein’ a Christian and all, I don’t want to do anything that goes against the principles of God’s kingdom.”
The oddly phrased thought hung in the air. “There’s another rule, Warden,” Dan observed, though not critically. “So dancing’s wicked too? What’s up with that?”
Sam emitted a short laugh. “All right, Stone! Now you got somebody else givin’ you ‘How come’ all the time.” He turned toward Dan. “Listen, Litton, you need to just do what I did. Get together with Stone, here, and just study through the whole thing. He’ll give you all the ‘what fors.’”
“How’s that?”
Sam set down his sandwich. “Back when I first got interested in this church stuff, I was just like you. ‘How come this?’ and ‘How come that?’ For all I knew, Jesus was Buddha’s first cousin. But Bucky and I went through the whole thing together and, man, he had answers for everything. Once we were done, Christianity made more sense than anything in the world.”
“Well, it wasn’t me, really,” Bucky interrupted.
Dan raised both hands. “Hey, guys, listen – two against one here. Just back off, huh?”
Bucky Stone: The Complete Adventure (Volumes 1-10) Page 35
